Ning

A large number of educational communities have been created in Ning generally using a free account. From July these are now going to cost depending your plan. There are three plans: Ning mini, Ning Plus and Ning Pro. The cheapest is Ning Mini at @2.95 a month. They say that Ning Mini Networks will be available for K-12 educators and their students that a 'major educational company' is sponsoring this. Higher education appears excluded from Ning's educational plan.

I have been reading Steve Hargadon's blog about this as well as the information on Ning. Steve's blog is a balanced account of the changes.

Pre-service training

I have just been reading Jessica Shiller's blog about pre-service training. She is discussing teacher training in America however a lot of what she has written is very applicable to us here in New Zealand. We had Teacher Training Colleges which have now been merged into the universities here. The one I teach at merged 3 years ago so we are still in the process of redesigning or changing a lot of the courses in our degree. We are also struggling with the best way to prepare our teachers for the classrooms.

I think this is particularly important as our classrooms and schools are also changing at a rapid pace (here in NZ we have Mission Heights with some particularly innovative practices). Teachers need to be flexible and open to new learning themselves - teachers are now 'life long learners' rather than expect to go and do the course and be an 'expert teacher'.

I agree with Jessica's comments particularly the last paragraph as this is also applicable to us here in NZ:

"whether teacher education is at a university or not, we need some standard for
what teacher education is. Teacher education should not dump theory nor should
it focus entirely on the practical skills that can only be applied inside of a
classroom. Teacher education should combine the theoretical and the practical,
but more importantly, it needs to give future teachers rich preparation so that
they can be strong teachers for kids"

I would be very interested in what others think of this.

Pre-service teacher training

We set our 1st year students a task to create a multimedia resource to use in the classroom with primary (elementary) aged children. The students were given a range of web 2 tools to use or they could use PhotoStory 3. The students were encouraged to use a tool they had not encountered before.

I provided online help tutorials as they were required - 'just in time learning'. As well students supported each other in group situations or through an online forum. This gave the students an experience where they were able to see how the tool (or something similary) could be used in their future classroom.

After making the resource they had to either give a link to their work or upload the work to our online learning environment. Many of the students who used Photostory 3 or Animoto then uploaded them to YouTube to be able to embed them in our online environment or into their e-portfolios. I wonder if there are many teachers who are providing experiences like this in their classrooms and how they are doing it. It is great to be able to show these students 'real life' examples to follow on.

Fantastic book for all teachers

Terry Freedman has done it again. He has put out a new book - The Amazing Web 2 Projects Book.

This book is free and has many ideas for the busy teacher. The best thing is all of these ideas come from teachers globally so that there are some really great ideas. These teachers have trialled the projects so you know that they are going to work.

Facebook in the classroom???

I have just been reading Ewan McIntosh's blog. He uses an example of Kimberley Swan and her total lack of understanding about consequences. His blog reminded me of a similar case here in New Zealand a couple of years ago when a teenager was derogatory about her place of employment. Her post was seen by her boss and she was sacked. Many teens here were very upset and did not understand why she had been fired. Lawyers were called in to show that the company had every right to fire her.

He further links to Lindsay who complained about her boss on her Facebook page; the only problem was she had added him as a 'Friend'.

Ewan's final sentence to sum up is fantastic (I wish I had thought of it...)

"If Lindsay or Kimberley had been taught by a real "real teacher", maybe they'd
have not only had a conversation at some point about how one uses social
networks for both play and work, as part of your public face, they may also have
had, subject to the filtering policies in their schools, some hands-on practical
sessions in privacy settings and the art of communication on the net."

Kevin Kelly talks about technology

In this thought-provoking talk Kevin Kelly muses on what technology means in our lives -- from its impact at the personal level to its place in the cosmos. It is worth having a look

NetVibes

Netvibes is a free personalised page where you can organise your online content.

Netvibes allows you to:

• Put your stuff in a page accessible from any computer or mobile device
• Manage and update your facebook and twitter accounts from one place
• Along with your personal, private page, create a public page viewable by everyone
• Setup a "watch" dashboard to keep track of your favorites subjects

• Pick a widget from a large catalogue of content and applications
• Put a widget on your own blog or computer desktop
• Share anything in your page with your friends

VoiceThread

VoiceThread has an interesting presentation about using Web 2 tools in the classroom. There are some great ideas in here. There are several different slides to the presentation so make sure you look at them all. You might like to make some comments on different pages especially if you have had experiences in with the tools.

Voicethread 4 Education wiki has some great ideas for using VoiceThread in the classroom.

Prezi

I have not discussed Prezi on my blog but it is a web 2 tool that I use for presentations and is a nice change to the usual PowerPoints. An advantage is that you can download presentations to take with you as well as embedding videos etc into the presentation.

It is a great tool to use in the classroom for students to present their work.

I made this one about Web 2 tools used in the classroom for communicating and collaborating.

Using collaborative tools in the classroom on Prezi

21st Century Teacher

It seems so long since I wrote anything in here. I have been incredibly busy but hopefully will now be able to keep this more up-to-date!! That is my New Years resolution anyway.

I have just been reading a booklet "21st Century Teacher: Are you ready to meet the challenge" on the Becta site to help teachers to cope with using the technologies of the 21st Century. In here you will find a checklist for teachers to use and then provides useful ideas for based on their answers. This is a UK site but very relevant for teachers from any country.

The booklet addresses:

• learning and teaching
• planning and administration
• assessing and reporting

Each of these areas has case studies discussing how teachers have used technology in these areas.